Posts Made By: Rod Kaufman

"Hegseth blasted by Loomer, conservatives over Qatari air force facility in Idaho"

"The air arm of Qatar’s armed forces, Qatar Emiri air force pilots would train to fly F-15s in the U.S."

"Steve Bannon, former White House chief strategist during Trump’s first term, told Newsweek there “should never be a military base of a foreign power on the sacred soil of America.”

"And conservative commentator Amy Malek wrote on X that “Qatar has spent $100 billion buying influence in the U.S., and it’s paying off.”

“I am in shock that Washington would approve a deal letting Qatar, Hamas’s #1 financier, open a Qatari Air Force facility on U.S. soil,” she wrote. “Qatar bankrolls Hamas, ISIS, the Taliban, al-Nusra, and the Muslim Brotherhood."


https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5550230-trump-allies-oppose-qatar-base/

"President Trump’s doctor said the commander-in-chief is in “exceptional health” following his “semiannual physical” at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland on Friday."

"During his physical, the president received “preventive health screenings and immunizations,” including a flu shot and COVID-19 booster vaccination, according to a memorandum from Trump’s physician Sean Barbabella."


"The physician added that the president exhibits “strong cardiovascular, pulmonary, neurological and physical performance.”

"Trump had another appointment in July, in which Barbabella said the president was diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency,"

“Additionally, recent photos of the president have shown minor bruising on the back of his hand, Barbabella wrote. ”This is consistent with minor soft tissue irritation from frequent handshaking and the use of aspirin, which is taken as part of a standard cardiovascular prevention regimen. This is a well-known and benign side effect of aspirin therapy.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5550620-trump-physical-exceptional-health/

Now about that frequent handshaking causing his bruising: Er, ah besides Trump not liking to shake hands in the first place, the bruising is on both hands...

Originally Posted by James Lacey

Anyone who thinks that Trump has achieved peace in the Middle East is as delusional as Trump himself. It's a multi-phase plan that hasn't even completed phase one yet. And on top of that, it requires the complete demilitarization of Hamas (good luck with that), a full Israeli withdrawal from populated areas, broader prisoner releases, and the establishment of a transitional government in Gaza. In the long term, Israel and the international community must fulfill promises of reconstruction and regional normalization. It's great that there is a plan, and it's being worked on, but if history has taught us anything, it's that peace in the Middle East is always fleeting and tends to disappear quickly.

It seems that you may be one of the people who believe that peace in the Middle East is a sign of the end times. I hope that's not true, because the list of the eschatological predictions that have been proven wrong to date is quite long.

The latest from Trump on Hamas disarming, a key point in the peace deal:

"President Trump said Tuesday he expected Hamas to decommission its weapons as stipulated in the negotiated peace agreement, or the U.S. would step in."

“They’re going to disarm, because they said they were going to disarm,” Trump said. “And if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5555070-trump-hamas-disarmament-gaza/

In other words, we'd have to put troops on the ground to do it. I'd be skeptical about Trump actually doing it, particularly after claiming now to have ended eight wars.

I will give Trump credit, however, for actions related to getting the hostages back and for bombing the Iranian nuke sites (despite the equivocal results), something other presidents have inferred but had never did, so at least as far as the middle east is considered, he is being taken seriously.

If only he'd be as aggressive in aiding Ukraine against the continual Russian assaults--here he talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk...

"Hamas has killed at least 32 people since the beginning of the ceasefire."

"Hamas has sought to reassert itself in Gaza since a ceasefire took hold, killing at least 32 people in a crackdown on groups that have pushed back against their tight grip on the enclave."

"Later on Monday, a video circulating on social media appeared to show several masked gunmen, some of them wearing green headbands resembling ones worn by Hamas, shooting with machine guns at least seven men after forcing them to kneel in the street. Posts identified the video as filmed in Gaza on Monday. Civilian spectators cheered "Allah Akbar," or God is Great, and called those killed "collaborators."

"But Trump, speaking on his way to the Middle East, suggested Hamas had been given a temporary green light to police Gaza."

"They do want to stop the problems, and they've been open about it, and we gave them approval for a period of time," he said, responding to a journalist's question about reports that Hamas was shooting rivals and instituting itself as a police force."


https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-870379

And for those who bought Trump watches:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oARm8Xi4PjE

Due to Trump's tariffs:

"The average price customers paid for a new vehicle in the US was $50,080 in September, a reflection in part of the steadily rising prices in the wake of automotive tariffs."

https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/14/business/new-cars-top-fifty-thousand-average

Originally Posted by James Brown

All of the above is bad, I agree, but the implicit message of red America being fools while blue America is enlightened is getting pretty stale.   Trump’s election is in part a reaction to elitist snobbery.   Wake me up when NPR does a piece on urban blue state foolishness.

"...the implicit message of red America being fools while blue America is enlightened is getting pretty stale."

I don't think that's the intent or the message that the article conveys but instead demonstrates the perils, in human costs, of the politicization of healthcare and health sciences. That one party does it to the degree that it does with the effects that it does is the story behind the story...

"When Dr. Banu Symington first moved to Rock Springs, Wyo., 30 years ago, she appreciated its empty desert landscapes and small-town respect for physicians like herself."

Fast-forward to today.

"Some of Symington's cancer patients curse at her for suggesting they vaccinate or wear masks to protect their weakened immune systems while undergoing chemotherapy."

"I actually had a patient's husband say, 'You only want me to mask because you're a liberal bitch.'"


"A lung cancer patient of Symington's refused vaccination, then died of COVID, still angrily believing the disease to be manufactured political fiction."

"There's also a surge in use of ivermectin — an anti-parasite drug — adding to patients' peril. "I have patients who are covertly taking ivermectin and then they end up in the intensive care unit because of a complication from the ivermectin," Symington explains. They're doing so on the advice of actor Mel Gibson, offered during his January appearance on Joe Rogan's popular conservative podcast."

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/10/15/nx-s1-5534324/rural-health-care-doctors-disinformation

"Bill Maher asks where ‘keffiyeh-wearing college kids’ went as Hamas is ‘shooting everybody’"?

“Where are the protesters?… Suddenly, the keffiyeh-wearing college kids are very quiet.”

"Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, appearing on the panel, responded: “Can’t be found. Yeah, can’t be found anywhere.” Maher added that Hamas is “shooting everybody,” calling out what he described as “the asymmetry of what goes on.”


https://www.jpost.com/j-spot/article-870857

Selected for all you enthusiastic astromarters out there: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX34w7fpB5c